Give Thanks

Posted On November 15, 2020

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV

Paul instructs us to give thanks in all circumstances. He further explains, “for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Why does God emphasize gratitude so much? Is it for His benefit? Does He need our praise? No, but like all of God’s commands for our lives, this is what’s best for us. God wants us to live our lives to the fullest, and He knows that in order to do so we must learn to live in gratitude. When we are focused on our blessings, we are focused on God. And He is the source of true happiness and contentment.

When we forget to be thankful, we end up feeling dissatisfied and anxious. We spend too much time wishing for things we want instead of learning to use the blessings God has given us. I have been very guilty of this. I spent years lamenting to God about my problems instead of praising Him for His gifts. As a result, I felt stuck in my spiritual journey. God can’t lead us if we don’t follow Him. We follow Him by obeying His commands, and this includes His command to give thanks in all circumstances . . . not just when everything’s going our way.

“We are never grateful for what we think we deserve. On the contrary, we gripe and complain and think God and others are unfair if it doesn’t come to us. If only we could see our situation clearly — even for a moment. We deserve expulsion; He gives us a diploma. We deserve the electric chair; He gives us a parade. Anything less than overwhelming gratitude should be unthinkable. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything.”

Randy Alcorn, Seeing the Unseen

God gave us everything when He gave His Son for us. Max Lucado tells us to focus on the cross and the gift of God’s grace. He encourages us to make a list of God’s blessings and to recite our reasons to be thankful every day. He reminds us that we can always find grounds for gratitude even in the problems that we face. God’s love is greater than any temporary troubles.

“We indwell a garden of grace. God’s love sprouts around us like lilacs and towers over us like Georgia pines, but we go on weed hunts. How many flowers do we miss in the process? If you look long enough and hard enough, you’ll find something to bellyache about. So quit looking!”

Max Lucado, Every Day Deserves a Chance

Rev. Lucado also points out that “gratitude is always an option.” So let’s choose to be grateful! This week we explore various ways we can praise and thank God for all His gifts. When we learn to focus on all the good things God provides, we change our outlook from one of disappointment to one of appreciation . . . and we find happiness in the process.

“Gratitude lifts our eyes off the things we lack so we might see the blessings we possess.”

Max Lucado, Every Day Deserves a Chance

Tell of His Wonders

“I will praise you , O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.”

Psalm 9:1-2

All we have to do is look around to see the amazing beauty of God’s creation. He could have chosen to make a dull, monochrome world. But He didn’t. Our world is bursting with color and life and awe-inspiring wonders. Our universe is filled with marvels we’ve only just begun to discover. He did all of this for us. Stars, forests, mountains, rivers, beaches, galaxies, . . . any one of these is cause for thanks and praise to our Creator!

“The physical world exists pre-eminently to display for our eternal joy the artistic creativity, endless power, and manifold wisdom of its Creator, the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Sam Storms

Max Lucado reminds us that the God who created the universe is more than able to work in our lives with the same creativity and power:

“Consider the earth! Our globe’s weight has been estimated at six sextillion tons (a six with twenty-one zeros). Yet it is precisely tilted at twenty-three degrees; any more or any less and our seasons would be lost in a melted polar flood. Though our globe revolves at the rate of one-thousand miles per hour or twenty-five thousand miles per day or nine million miles per year, none of us tumbles into orbit. . . . As you stand . . . observing God’s workshop, let me pose a few questions. If he is able to place the stars in their sockets and suspend the sky like a curtain, do you think it is remotely possible that God is able to guide your life? If your God is mighty enough to ignite the sun, could it be that he is mighty enough to light your path? If he cares enough about the planet Saturn to give it rings or Venus to make it sparkle, is there an outside chance that he cares enough about you to meet your needs?”

Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment

God’s natural wonders are evident in His creation. The wonders He works in our lives are even more amazing. Let’s praise Him for His mighty acts. We can follow the examples of the Psalms which recount God’s miracles in prayer and song. We can also tell others of all these wonders, sharing our sense of awe and admiration for what God has done.

“Beauty is both a gift and a map. It is a gift to be enjoyed and a map to be followed back to the source of the beauty with praise and thanksgiving.”

Steve DeWitt

Hope in the Lord

“Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.”

Isaiah 40:28-31 NIV

In addition to praising God for the things He has already done in our lives, we can thank Him for the work He is currently doing, even if we can’t see the results yet. We do this by putting our hope and trust in Him. Doing so energizes us and renews our strength. Charles F. Stanley explains that God is always working in our lives to bless us in ways we can’t even imagine:

“If you want God’s very best for your life, you must trust Him to provide it in His time. His knowledge of you and your situation are absolutely perfect — and so is His timing. He is going to make sure that you are completely prepared for the blessings that He has for you. Therefore, make sure to keep your eyes on Him. . . . When you wait for the Lord, you should look forward to what He will do with joyful expectation and confident hope, because He is providing His very best for you.”

Charles F. Stanley, 30 Life Principles

Admire His Holiness

“Who among the gods is like you, Lord?
Who is like you — majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory, working wonders?”

Exodus 15:11 NIV

God is our heavenly Father, and we can thank Him for His loving care. But I think sometimes we forget that there is so much more to God. We cannot fully understand or express all that He is. He is all-powerful and all-knowing. He is awesome and glorious. He commands armies of angels. He is majestic. He is perfect. He is holy. When we consider how far above us He really is, it makes His willingness to come down to us even more amazing.

“In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. . . . one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover.”

C. S. Lewis, Miracles

Nourish Your Soul

“Bodily exercise is all right, but spiritual exercise is much more important and is a tonic for all you do. So exercise yourself spiritually, and practice being a better Christian because that will help you not only now in this life, but in the next life too.”

1 Timothy 4:8 TLB

Another way we can show our gratitude to God is by inviting Him to work through us to accomplish His will. We do this by getting ourselves spiritually fit for service. Like physical exercise this takes dedication and discipline, and results don’t appear overnight. We must cultivate daily habits of prayer, Bible study, meditation on Scripture, and gratitude. We must practice confession and servanthood. We must learn to be led by the Holy Spirit. And we must cultivate any other spiritual disciplines that allow the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us. The goal of the Christian life is transformation. The Holy Spirit does the work, but we have to let Him in to do it. The preface to John Ortberg’s book about spiritual disciplines discusses this transformation:

“How do I grow? What does a spiritually mature person even look like? Why does it seem so hard, and go so slowly? Will I ever be any different? . . . The Christian gospel insists that the transformation of the human personality really is possible. Never easy. Rarely quick. But possible. I see it happening in people sometimes — occasionally even in myself. It begins to happen anytime people become intensely serious about learning from Jesus how to arrange their lives.”

John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted

This is not easy. But what better way to honor Christ than learning to be like Him? What better way to praise God than allowing Him to transform our lives? What better offering can we give than ourselves?

Kneel in Prayer

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Philippians 4:6 NIV

The verse above gives us an antidote for anxiety: with thanksgiving, present our requests to God. Again, this is for our benefit. When we remember to be thankful for our blessings, our problems don’t seem so big. In The Weekly Prayer Project we are encouraged to pray with a grateful heart: “When you pray, you are communicating with God. You are entering His courts. Beginning your prayers with gratitude puts your heart in the right posture.”

More than anything, God wants to have a close, personal relationship with each one of us. He longs for us to come to Him and spend time with Him. He longs to hold us in His loving arms and let us know everything is going to be okay. He’s got us.

“Heaven knows no difference between Sunday morning and Wednesday afternoon. God longs to speak as clearly in the workplace as he does in the sanctuary. He longs to be worshiped when we sit at the dinner table and not just when we come to his communion table. You may go days without thinking of him, but there’s never a moment when he’s not thinking of you.”

Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment

Sing to the Lord

“Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise . . . .”

Psalm 96:1-4 NIV

I love to sing. I’ve been singing in church for most of my life, but I still get nervous every time. What if my voice cracks? What if my music is out of order? What if my pitch goes flat? What if I mess up the words? Come to think of it, I have had every one of these things happen to me, but I sing anyway! Singing in front of people can be scary and nerve wracking, but that’s also what makes it exciting and special. The time spent practicing is time I’m sacrificing to God. The willingness to put myself out there and praise God despite my nervousness makes it a true gift from the heart. Sometimes I mess up. Sometimes everything goes right. Either way, I think God appreciates the gift and can use it to bless others. And there’s nothing special about me. The same is true for you, too. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable singing in front of others. But you can still sing to God. Why? Because He commands us to do so. I think there is a vulnerability and rawness to our praise when we offer it in song. It forces us to forget everything else and just worship our Lord.

“But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord alone.”

Jonah 2:9 NLT

“To understand the magnitude of Jonah’s prayer in this verse [Jonah 2:9], you have to remember where he was. Jonah brought God songs of praise from within the belly of a whale. A whale. God is worthy of worship even when your circumstances are difficult. Is there something that’s keeping you from fully praising God? Circumstances change, but God doesn’t. You can praise Him for who He is, even when life feels overwhelming.”

The Weekly Prayer Project

T. H. A. N. K. S.

We’ve discussed several ways, which I’ve summarized below, to praise and give thanks to the Lord. I’m sure there are many, many more. The point is to focus on God and His blessings instead of ourselves and our problems. When we do, we will be truly blessed!

Max Lucado tells us: “The good life begins not when circumstances change, but when our attitude toward them does.” Gratitude works wonders. Praying to God with thanksgiving in our hearts brings peace. Recounting God’s blessings brings joy. Grateful anticipation of future blessings brings strength. Rev. Lucado lists more benefits of having a grateful heart:

“Gratitude is a mindful awareness of the benefits of life. It is the greatest of virtues. Studies have linked the emotion with a variety of positive effects. Grateful people tend to be more empathetic and forgiving of others. People who keep a gratitude journal are more likely to have a positive outlook on life. Grateful individuals demonstrate less envy, materialism, and self-centeredness. Gratitude improves self-esteem and enhances relationships, quality of sleep, and longevity. If it came in pill form, gratitude would be deemed the miracle cure. . . . Gratitude leads us off the riverbank of If Only and escorts us into the fertile valley of Already. The anxious heart says, ‘Lord, if only I had this, that, or the other, I’d be okay.’ The grateful heart says, ‘Oh, look! You’ve already given me this, that, and the other. Thank you, God.'”

Max Lucado, Anxious for Nothing

This week’s Scripture passages focus on thanksgiving. There is a printer-friendly pdf version below the image. God has given us so many good gifts, and He is always there when we need Him. Let’s give thanks to Him every day . . . for His sake and for ours.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought;
and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

G. K. Chesterton

References:

• Alcorn, Randy. Seeing the Unseen, Expanded Edition: A 90-Day Devotional to Set Your Mind on Eternity. Multnomah, 2017.
• Hiltibidal, Scarlet. The Weekly Prayer Project: A Challenge to Journal, Pray, Reflect, and Connect with God. Zondervan, 2017.
• Lewis, C. S. “Miracles.” The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, Harper San Francisco, 2002, pp. 297-462.
• Lucado, Max. Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World. Thomas Nelson, 2017.
• Lucado, Max. Every Day Deserves a Chance: Wake Up to the Gift of 24 Hours. Thomas Nelson, 2007.
• Lucado, Max. Grace for the Moment: Inspirational Thoughts for Each Day of the Year. J. Countryman, 2000.
• Ortberg, John. The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People. Zondervan, 2002.
• Stanley, Charles F. 30 Life Principles Study Guide: A Study for Growing in Knowledge and Understanding of God. Thomas Nelson, 2008.

Images:

• Chrysanthemum featured image by chezbeate from Pixabay
• Give Thanks image by hudsoncrafted from Pixabay
• Starry Sky image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay
• Tunnel image by Peter H from Pixabay
• Holy Bible image by KatineArt from Pixabay
• Hands image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
• Music Birds image by Dieter_G from Pixabay
• Tea Lights image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay